AIBU to think informing ten colleagues while off sick is unreasonable?

[eestameen]

I was off sick yesterday with a serious migraine. First time I’ve been off from work with illness in almost two years and first time at my current workplace (started 3 months ago).

I checked the HR manual and it said I had to notify HR and my Manager before my usual start time of 8am. Set an internal and external out of office.

I did this and then told my Manager I would follow up with what projects I was working on and what work needed to be done that day

I emailed my Manager this list and included who I was working with, i e who might expect work from me that day. It was over 10 people.

Logged off and laid in bed in a dark room. At 1pm I get a response from my Manager saying it is my responsibility to inform each individual I am working with that I am unwell and off work.

AIBU to think it’s crazy to expect someone off sick to have to email over ten people and also be monitoring emails? I am worried as this makes me look really bad!

Ive always taken the view that if you are not well enough to go into work then you are not well enough to deal with emails or take phone calls. If I suspected such was likely to happen I would switch all calls to voicemail or put a temporary block on the numbers.

So what if she's ill in the first 3 months?

It's not like people generally get ill on purpose...

YANBU - my manager just says people aren’t on. We aren’t told why people are off but assume off sick. It isn’t their business (colleagues) why you are off!

Off ill is an umbrella term
if I was upto it I would do it if I wasn’t I wouldn’t and tell manager

I wouldn’t have a problem with being asked this

Your OOO message should be sufficient for contacts. I'd think it odd if anyone emailed me as one of 10 people to tell me about a short term illness. It might be appropriate if you were going to be off long term, especially for something planned like surgery, but not for a migraine when you'd expect to be back within a few days at most.

I couldn’t have managed as much as you did with a migraine. My verbal skills, including writing disappear, and screen light would make me vomit.

Teams usually gives a status update if Out of Office is on

Does sound a bit unreasonable but I’d just send one email and cc them all in (or whole company just to be petty), and press send.

I think it’s completely unreasonable . Really 1 person or 2 max should need to be informed if you are sick once you have handed over anything relevant regarding cancellations etc . A manager should sort that out on the sick persons behalf . Ten people is ludicrous. For confidentiality and dignity reasons for one thing. As well as that it shows a poor organisational structure if ten people need to be informed and is unprofessional in my opinion.

By the same token, she put an OOO of so anyone that tried to email would know she wasn't available. Why does she need to personally tell each person?

There are some mad answers here. I'm a manager. If someone's sick, they're sick, it's not their job to work or to reorganise work. That's what a manager is for - including making sure that urgent work gets done if someone is off sick.

Really you think cover teachers are actually teachers who can teach every subject?

We're lucky to get cover suprivisers who can actually control a class. Even cover teachers can not do practical lessons, so no DT, science or food tech practical work when a teacher is off sick unless it's a colleague covering and normally they are to busy teaching their own classes.

Wow! I’m not sure who everyone works for, but as a manager you are breaking every confidentially rule going to share anything about a direct report being off ill for any reason. Yes, explain the reason for the absence to your manager directly, and that’s as far as it goes.

Having to take responsibility to communicate with anyone other than your manager (unless you personally wish to do so) is bang out of order, and should be taken up with HR.

Yes this.

When I have a migraine im in agony, id barely be able to ring one person let alone anything else.

Because, for example, if she's due to send someone an update to confirm the work was done at five o'clock, they won't know until she's late and they get an out of office message if they email her. Whereas if she emails them in the morning they can plan around that. It's not complicated.

I think it depends on the workplace. If I had meetings with external clients then I would be expected to cancel them myself. And to be honest if it was internal meetings I still would as wouldn't trust my manager to do so and wouldn't want them wondering where I was and wasting their time.

Just email them "apologies not in today unwell, catch up when back" job done.

Don’t be a manager if you can’t be arsed managing people

some migraines don’t last for days.